Pervert Shoe, the S&M Koala, and his Son Damien.

Although some of the things in the next couple of paragraphs may come out sounding like they are misogynistic, there is nothing farther from the truth. I just want to throw that out there before anyone reads any further.

I'm pretty sure that most males think get married because they believe they are in love and want to spend the rest of their life with that special person. I personally believe that the average male gets married for one simple reason, which is only deduced later in life. Clothes Shopping. There is no worse torture that can be enforced on the average male than making him go clothes shopping. We instantly turn into that horrible little five year old you see in the Supermarket, screaming their lungs out because they want candy and not broccoli. You know the ones I'm talking about. They travel in packs with some overweight woman in a sundress trying to yell at all of them at once. Like a crowd of angry drunk monkeys in a china shop, only they are more pleasant than what we turn into at the mention of the afore mentioned activity. We whine, pout, swear and generally turn into little bastards if we have to go. It usually only takes a couple of times out with your Significant Other before they have all your sizes memorized, and although you won't get to stay home and watch TV, you will be allowed to go look at magazines, hangout in the food court, etc. This is where the predicament lies for most separated/divorced/widowed males. We are so used to having the clothes fairies do our shopping that it is a completely lost talent. We actually force ourselves to forget how to do it. It is on par with me walking into the John Hopkins clinic and performing open heart surgery. I can give it a good try, but it isn’t going to be pretty. And with this I begin the tale of Pervert Shoe.

Pervert Shoe is the tale of my shoes. Specifically my right shoe. It is in a very sad state of disrepair, but I cannot go out and buy new shoes. It is simply not in my abilities. I can't take the pandering of the people at some shoe store as they are trying to get me to buy the new $400 Nike's that are more aerodynamic, have a special liquid insert to help me with my lift between steps, cook me breakfast, and find me which stock to play to become independently wealthy by the time I'm 33. You would swear that these guys eat, breathe, and shit shoes. They are reciting shit about shoes like a physicist recites equations about the atomic weight of Nobelium. I don't know what scares me more, the fact that some one spends this much time studying the shoes, or that these people are forced to memorize them, and be excited about it. They're just shoes. Maybe that's why I don't understand fashion. If it's just cloth cut some special way, why is it $300.00? Back to the tale of my shoe. It has now become Iconic. My friends and I have become so used to pervert shoe that I can't give them up, even though I know I should. He is a character in a comic now. I protect him like the red-headed bastard stepchild. It bothers me that I talk this way about my shoe, but I know that the day will come when I have to give them up. That's why I miss the clothing fairies. They would just be gone, and I would have new shoes when I came home from work. No fuss, No muss, just new shoes. My shoes would disappear humanely in the night, and I'd have new shoes when I woke up to go to work in the morning.

I think I need a vacation or something.

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."
Robert Anthony